hadn’t died herself. Her hair had been wet and she’d been found naked as a newborn.
Darlington had dug a little deeper, unable to shake his suspicions, but there had been no
blood or remains in the drain—if she’d somehow been involved, she hadn’t showered the
proof away. So why had the attacker left the girls alone? If the police were right and this
was some kind of beef with another dealer, why spare Alex and her friend? Drug dealers
who beat people to death with bats didn’t seem like the spare-the-women-and-children type. Maybe the attacker had believed they were dead already from the drugs. Or maybe
Alex had tipped someone off. But she knew something more about what had happened than she’d told the police. He felt it in his bones.
“Hellie and I got high,” she said quietly, still brushing her finger against the windowsill. “I woke up in the hospital. She didn’t wake up at all.”
She looked very small suddenly and Darlington felt a stab of shame. She was twenty,
older than most freshmen, but she was still just a kid in a lot of ways, in over her head.
And she’d lost friends that night, her boyfriend, everything familiar.
“Come with me,” he said. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe because he felt guilty for prying.
Maybe because she didn’t deserve to be punished for saying yes to a bargain no right-minded person would refuse.
He led her back to the gloom of the armory. It had no windows, and its walls were lined
in shelves and drawers nearly two stories high. It took him a moment to find the cupboard
he wanted. When he rested his hand on the door, the house paused, then let the lock give
with a disapproving click.
Carefully, he removed the box—heavy, gleaming black wood, inlaid with mother-of-
pearl.
“You’ll probably need to remove your shirt,” he said. “I’ll give Dawes the box and she
can—”
“Dawes doesn’t like me.”
“Dawes doesn’t like anyone.”
“Here,” she said. She pulled the shirt over her head, revealing a black bra and ribs shadowed like the furrows of a tilled field. “Don’t get Dawes.”
Why was she so willing to put herself in his hands? Was she unafraid or just reckless?
Neither trait boded well for her future at Lethe. But he had the sense that it was neither of those things. It felt like she was testing him now, like she’d laid down another challenge.
“Some propriety wouldn’t kill you,” he said.
“Why take the chance?”
“Usually when a woman takes her clothes off in front of me I have some warning.”
Alex shrugged, and the shadows moved over her skin. “Next time, I’ll light the signal fires.”
“That would be best.”
Tattoos covered her from wrist to shoulder and spread beneath her clavicles. They looked like armor.
He opened the box’s lid.
Alex drew in a sudden breath and skittered backward.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. She’d retreated nearly halfway across the room.
“I don’t like butterflies.”
“They’re moths.” They perched in even rows in the box, soft white wings fluttering.
“Whatever.”
“I’ll need you to stay still,” he said. “Can you?”
“Why?”
“Just trust me. It will be worth it.” He considered. “If it’s not, I’ll drive you and your
roommates to Ikea.”
Alex balled her shirt in her fists. “And take us for pizza after.”
“Fine.”
“And dear Aunt Eileen is going to buy me some new fall clothes.”
“Fine. Now come here, you coward.”
She crossed back to him in a kind of sideways shuffle, averting her eyes from the contents of the box.
One by one, he took out the moths and laid them gently on her skin. One at her right
wrist, her right forearm, the crook of her elbow, her slender biceps, the knob of her shoulder. He repeated the process with her left arm, then placed two moths at the points of
her collarbones where the heads of two black snakes curled, their tongues nearly meeting
at the hollow of her throat.
“Chabash,” he murmured. The moths beat their wings in unison. “Uverat.” They flapped their wings again and began to turn gray. “Memash.”